Get Paid to

Updated on June 21, 2011

Get Paid For Your Time

Entrepreneurs are very good at making money, at figuring out how to get paid for their time and developing business strategies to keep increasing their income. I am at that point in my writing career when the fun has stopped and the time has come to be an entrepreneur. Like most I have read the articles explaining how to get paid more money and like many I have ignored this sound business advice.

I have decided to write this article to explain how I plan to take my Hubpages advertising program earnings from 0.30p a day to £2 a day. Now for some this may seem like no big deal but for me although the money is important the big deal is testing the business plan against the advice and proving it works.

I will explain each part of my money making plan in the hope that when it works you can copy it and increase your earnings. I am pretty sure I will make mistakes and I will keep updating this article to tell you about them but for the most part the plan I am following isn't new, it is a well trodden path to success or at least so I am led to believe.

Without further delay I will now share my business plan with you:

Business Model

I joined Hubpages 10 months ago and immediately started writing about dog training, rheumatoid arthritis and created some sales hubs. I followed this business model for about 8 months and achieved a payout from both Google AdSense and Amazon. This was a great achievement because it meant that I had managed to start a business with no money and effectively made a profit, being realistic my hourly rate was a pretty poor return on time invested. I started to think about the advice and tips I had picked up along the way, I investigated the other writers who on the surface were making money from Hubpages and I decided to follow their business model to see if it was better than mine.

Google waged war on content farms, Hubpages traffic and subsequently earnings went through the floor and my trickle of income became none existent. I sulked for a while and pondered my entrepreneurial future, I followed more advice and worked on creating blogs, joined other writing programs and waited for the algorithm to stabilise itself. In my opinion it has settled down now and I can get back on track and work my new business plan which I will now explain.

Get Paid to Write

The articles I have written so far have been off the cuff, what I mean by that is; I wanted to write them, there wasn't much planning involved just writing. Now that I am working from a structured plan hopefully I will be getting paid more to write.

The first thing I did in my new regime is test my existing URLs against the Google keyword tool, guess what; they are all high competition, low search and worth roughly 0.04p each. Needless to say I simply can't carry on like this if I want to earn more money by increasing my Hubpages advertising revenue. Straight away I went through the URLs I intended to write and deleted all but one of them. My next job was to develop my strategy for new hubs and here it is:

Keywords and phrases must have an earning potential of £2 per click

Must have at least 3000 searches per month

Must be low competition

Must be a subject I know about or can get a good understanding of fairly quickly

Must pass all of the above or doesn't get written

To some of you this may sound like common sense, some writers wouldn't get out of bed for this but lets be honest for a newbie like me it will be a massive improvement on where I am now and is a credible business plan. I will talk about each point in more detail below, a word of warning for experienced writers; this will be beneath you but I make no apologies because there will be many more writers who will find this information useful.

Finding Valuable keyphrases

We all know that finding a single keyword that meets my above criteria will be nigh on impossible, I am sure they are out there but to be honest I can't find them.

I typed into the keyword tool general terms, terms for subjects I am comfortable with, clearly this brings up results that don't meet the whole criteria. I then set the tool to list the phrases in average click value order with the highest click value at the top. Surprisingly that brought up many phrases I wouldn't have thought of and gave me at least a dozen new ideas to test against my next selection point. On a number of the suggested phrases I could see at a glance that they met all of the above selection criteria so I quickly jotted them down for future research.

Enough Searches

There are many search terms with a high average click value but very few people searching for them, It is tempting to write in these areas hoping that just a couple of high value clicks will compensate for the lack of quantity, some may be prepared to have a go but for me I must stick to the business plan so I ignore them.

Instead I use my new found search terms and pick the ones with more than 3000 searchers per month, this narrows it down a bit but still leaves me with plenty to write about.

Beat the Competition

Too find a high value search term with no competition is asking a lot I know, the good news is that if you look hard enough they are there. Most of the terms I have highlighted for future articles have low competition rather than none so my next job is to check out the competition.

I have a look first on Hubpages, for the most part and without being too modest I am confident I can improve on what's already there. Secondly I have a look on Google search, millions of results come up which initially make me think I have been wasting my time but then I remember I am targeting a specific term so I put the key phrase in speech marks, instantly 75% of the results disappear. A quick glance of what's left restores my confidence in my plan as I still believe I can compete with whats left.

Results

Having followed this plan to the letter I now have 24 potential articles, that's articles that have a good click value, decent traffic, low competition and in a topic area I already know about. This process sounds time consuming, initially it is but I am sure it will yield better results than my previous half hearted attempt at being a successful entrepreneur.

Now if I just left it there then this would be another one of those articles that all new hubbers seem to write, you know the ones "my plan to change the world". I said at the start of this article that if I could help one writer then it would be worth it and in my opinion there is no better help than showing actual proof of what I have been talking about. Sadly I have no idea how to do screenshots and post them in my article ( I will learn and update them) so for now I will have to write the demonstration out.

Search Term

Search Per Month

Competition

Click Value

Arthritis

2,240,000

high

£2.60

Arthritis Psoriatic

60,500

low

£4.99

Psoriasis Plaque

12,000

low

£8.56

As you can see from the table above I started off with the term arthritis, it has a lot of people searching for it and a click value in my range but it also has a lot of publishers going after the same term so doesn't fit my criteria. Scrolling through the keyword tool I can see that arthritis psoriatic has a much better click value, low competition and still over 60,000 searches a month. Taking it even further and on the same theme Psoriasis Plaque has a brilliant click value, low competition and still 12000 searches a month.

Simply by doing a little bit of work I have found two search terms or niches that have the potentail to make money with little competition, surely this has got to be better than chasing key phrases that will be impossible in the short term to rank for.

You will be pleased to know I will not be writing about either of the two so it will be interesting to see if anyone does.

My Earnings

Unfortunately I haven't had a full month on the Hubpages Ad program yet so it is impossible to give a month on month comparison. I will however complete the chart below over the next 6 months starting with April's earnings to see how the income increases. I fully appreciate it is not very scientific as there are many variables, not least I am using Google AdWords to estimate Hubpages Ad earnings and each hub published should in theory increase earnings but don't get bogged down in the detail.

The point is; if I write articles as per my plan, my income increases and I get paid £2 a day then as far as I am concerned it has been a success, a success that can be duplicated by anyone who wants to.

UPDATE, I have been slacking in the writing stakes due to other committments but notice my earnings have increased slightly rather than going down, residual income at it's best.

Month

Total Hubs Published

Earnings Per Day Average

April

6 4

.20

May

63

.25

June

64

.30

July

64

.31

August

64

pending

September

pending

pending

Get paid to

If you have reached the end of "Get Paid to" then I thank you.

I am sure I will receive comments that find fault in this plan or pointing out where I have contradicted myself, to be honest that's OK as long as they are constructive. My main goals are to increase my earnings by making strategic changes to my business plan and help others do the same, only then I can call myself an entrepreneur.

If you are not already a member of Hubpages then I strongly recommend you join now.

If you think this plan might work for you then please let me know in the comments box below and of course if the information was useful then share it using the buttons below.

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